8. A two-year transition period in which she can get rid of Boris Johnson.

7. A knife and fork, instead of the plastic spoon routinely provided to ‘third countries’.

6. Some of those Belgian sticky letters that don’t fall off.

5. An agreement that the UK’s 100b euro divorce bill can be deferred (with interest) until there’s a Labour government.

4. A pony. She was forbidden one as a child. A life of juvenile delinquency – trashing wheat fields, etc. – could have been averted; she could have had a nice happy life in the equestrian world; and she wouldn’t have joined the Conservative Party out of spite and ended up as a weak, unstable, pathetic, self-harming mess. Ahem.

3. A job at the EU Commission if her party dumps her before Christmas.

2. That no one – please, please, please! – should leak about the dinner. (Oops.)

7. Only two parties to a Hard Brexit fight. Or maybe twenty-seven against one, whatever…

6. One Hard Brexit fight at a time. (Except in the Tory Party, where it’s a free-for-all.)

5. No shirt, no shoes, no plan, no second referendum, no brain, no parachute*, no hope, no chance, no future.

4. Hard Brexit will go on for as long as it has to. Forever, basically.

3. If this is your first time at Hard Brexit Club, you HAVE to jump off the cliff.

2. There is no second rule of Hard Brexit Club because we’ve abolished all the EU red tape that… What? We have to duplicate at least twenty EU agencies after Brexit at enormous expense? Huh?

1. The first rule of Hard Brexit Club is SHUT UP AND STOP COMPLAINING! The people have spoken! There is NO CLIFF EDGE! The saboteurs and remoaners are TALKING THE COUNTRY DOWN! Everything is going to be JUST FINE! Snarrgh. Pfft. Gurgle. Blop.

(*Except for Boris, Farage, Gove, Cameron, etc…)

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It may seem morbid, with the Conservative Party in its death throes, but it’s not too soon to be contemplating some kind of memorial – a striking monument of sterling British design – that could be installed in Trafalgar Square or, failing that, in a skip in Slough. How, we should ask ourselves, would the party that has done so much for this country like to be remembered?

Here, then, are the Top Ten Contenders For Great Tory Monument:

10. Norman Tebbit’s Bike. This was the very jalopy that the workless were enjoined to merrily mount back in the days of Thatcherite mass unemployment. These days, of course, scroungers are forbidden the rush of the road beneath their tyres, or the wind in their hair; they must sit by their phones, 24/7, or else be sanctioned. Such sweet times!

9. Margaret Thatcher’s Handbag. Jacques Delors always claimed that she kept a house brick in it, and he ought to know. Yet, as we have seen, it came to symbolise all that was best, and most feared, in British diplomacy. Since then, and up until Tory threats to bomb Spain over Gibraltar, no one has menaced the continentals better. Boris Johnson is rumoured to keep an exact replica at his country residence.

8. John Major’s Underpants. First celebrated by The Guardian’s own Steve Bell, these garments are about to go on show at the V&A, in their latest blockbuster exhibition, archly entitled ‘John Major’s Pants’. Each pair will be housed in a specially-made glass case, surrounded by traffic cones – both to protect these precious smalls from the public, and to remind us all of the former Prime Minister’s signature policy achievement.

7. A Duck House. Way back in 2009, as the Conservatives contemplated their imminent landslide victory over Gordon Brown, spirits rose high. So giddy were they, in fact, that one Tory MP spent £1,645 of taxpayers’ cash on an ornamental “Stockholm” duck house to float in the middle of the pond in the grounds of his Hampshire mansion. Whoops! How we laughed at the time. All is forgiven now, of course, ‘austerity’ be damned!

6. A Brown Envelope. It’s totally old-school now that we have PayPal, but if you wanted a political pay-off from some sleazy pal in the nineties, the brown envelope was your friend. And your springboard to a career in Welsh politics, say – or UKIP, or TV. If you’re a comical Tory you can get away with anything. Look at Boris.

5. A Dead Sheep. A suitably toothless specimen, preserved with great commercial integrity, if little taxidermic skill, by Damien Hirst. Once upon a time, there were some Conservatives who thought that Mrs Thatcher might not have gotten absolutely everything exactly right. They were known as ‘the Wets’. Their leader resembled a dead sheep. If they don’t get this monument gig, they’ll be forgotten forever.

4. A Spare Bedroom. Aspiration is good, right? So let’s take it to the max. The Tories really believe in aspiration – even if, for many people now, a spare bedroom seems as forbidden and unattainable as an orange to a Victorian pauper child. Keep dreaming the British Dream!

3. David Cameron’s Pig’s Head. Remember how puzzled we all were about Tory ‘modernisation’ – until we learned about that? But how wise Mr Cameron was to work out his policy ideas in private before extending them to the ordinary public.

2. A Housing Estate. A housing estate? Doesn’t really work as a monument, does it? But someone figured that out long ago. I mean, what if the National Trust had bought the site and put up a lot of educational signs? Because this particular housing estate sits where the Orgreave Coking Plant used to be. So how about a police horse instead?

…

Ah, f—k it. We’re kidding ourselves here, aren’t we? There’s only one fitting monument for the Tories. One image that says it all. And we all know what it is.

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10. Boris is your man. The young people love him. They’ve seen him on the telly-box, and that new-fangled computer what’s-it, and they think he’s jolly hilarious – especially when he’s doing his Kipling impression in some foreign johnny’s temple, ha-ha!

9. There’s no need to spoil your lovely village with lots of pill boxes for plebs, just to keep Labour out. After Brexit most of the plebs will be heading to Romania to pick cabbages.

8. Even Labour voters don’t want to live in Venezuela. After Boris becomes PM they will, but that won’t be a problem for you.

7. Corbyn is almost as old as you. Plus he’s practically a vegan, so if the Mail and the Telegraph are right he should be pegging out at any moment.

6. You may have heard about this Momentum thing, but you don’t need to worry. It’s just a fad. Like portable telephones.

5. You didn’t hear this from me, but Theresa May has a secret, very cunning plan to re-establish her authority and popularity: she’s going to provoke a miners’ strike! Sshh…

4. Brexit is going to be a splendid thing, and we’re going to get our empire back, sort of. But if, by some vanishingly remote chance, it turns out to be an epic disaster of world-historical proportions, we can blame it on Labour. Just like we did with the financial crisis.

3. You may have read that putting up taxes on the wealthy is popular. Have you ever met anyone who thinks like that? No, neither have I. There you are, then.

2. Corbyn may have 600,000 energetic and devoted party members at his command, plus the might of his praetorian guard, Momentum; and he may look like a terrible, fearsome, impregnable conqueror right now – but just you wait until Jacob Rees-Mogg challenges him to a duel at dawn, down in Somerset.